


A Bed of Hands and Teeth

by Ghanima_Starkiller



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 08:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/672587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghanima_Starkiller/pseuds/Ghanima_Starkiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A flood isn't the worst thing that Annie Cresta faced during the games--it's what lurks in the water, that killed her competitors off before the dam broke....</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bed of Hands and Teeth

It wasn't the water that scared Annie Cresta, nor the earthquake that had loosened the dam and unloosed the deluge, the rush of the flood making the world tremble more dramatically and in a more primal fashion than the quake could ever have. She was a strong swimmer, even for someone from District 4, stronger maybe even than Finnick.

Drowning isn't, despite popular belief, a slow process, and she has listened, for the past two hours, as far as she could tell from the movement of the sun, to her fellow tributes dying. Going under, coming back up, and going under once more, their screams, their cries for help becoming watery, more desperate. She keeps paddling along, her arms and legs growing dreadfully tired, leaden, but she never thinks for a moment of stopping. Because it isn't just the water she has to fear.

Unlike the other tributes, the creatures don't drown. They don't swim, either; as far as Annie can tell, they're not capable of much aside from inflicting terrible death. Some float, if they are still enough, while she feels the bony hands of others grab at her ankles; sometimes, she feels as if their dessicated jaws are brushing her feet, trying to bite down, and then another swell will rush over the broken lip of the dam and rise her higher into the air, and she's safe. Somewhat. Their bones make a strange and eerie clacking sound, hollow, and the wind has a way of finding the places in their rotting skulls to blow through that will make it sound like a moan, or a laugh.

As Caesar Flickerman debates the possibility of there being no victor this year on air, and the tributes sink into their deathly silence, Annie struggles not to tire, and not to head to the bottom again, the street that is now a riverbed of hands and teeth. There are worse things than drowning. She's seen them. She's seen those clacking teeth, the putrescent skin pulled back in a permanent sneer, sink into flesh, she's seen the spray of red. She's seen hands pull, with one purpose, with so little strength but a single-mindedness that makes them relentless.

She's laughing and screaming at the same time as one comes surfing towards her, the water pouring through its open, unhinged jaw like saliva. She paddles away, using the last of her strength as her legs begin to go slack. She stares up at the sun, wondering if they'll leave her here to die because if hadn't gone the way they had wanted it to, when something blocks out the sun and she's being lifted. She looks down and she sees them all in the water, where it has turned red from their feasting. She's sick right before she looses consciousness, and her last thought is that they'll either edit that out or show her in close-up.


End file.
